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New world – familiar venue
Tag / Cafe oto
Skid’s 6 CD Box set released
Everybody else can now share my pleasure in listening to 60 years of Alan Skidmore making wonderful music. The 6 CD Box set previewed at the Cafe Oto gig is now available from Mark Wastell’s Confront Recordings.
And what value is is too. A base price of £32 (you can pay more if you like) means that each CD is only a fiver. And each CD contains incredibly generous tracks of largely unpublished material plus one or two favourites from Alan’s albums over the years. Add to this a 20-page informative booklet by Richard Williams charting Skid’s life and music and it’s a truly outstanding package.
Don’t delay – get it today. Click HERE to get a digital download of this amazing compilation. The physical CD Box Set has sold out but you can still enjoy the music.
Birthday Bonanza
21 April 2023 was a very significant date. There was a star-studded gig at London’s Café Oto called Impressions of John Coltrane. It was celebrating 60 years since the release of John Coltrane’s revered album Impressions. And another album was previewd that night in Dalston: A Supreme Love a six CD box set covering six decades of playing by Alan Skidmore. Oh, and it also happened to be Alan’s 81st birthday. Quite a night!
As the poster suggested, there were three groups in the evening’s line up. A trio with Ed Jones on tenor sax, Dominic Lash on bass and Mark Wastell on a splendid array of percussion instruments. Mark was also the organiser of the whole thing. This was a contemplative, free improvisatory set which meandered in and out of Coltrane’s 1966 composition The Father and The Son and The Holy Ghost and set the scene for the evening very well. Next up was the David Angol Quartet with David on tenor and soprano saxes and they were joined by Alan Skidmore for a spirited rendition of the tune Impressions. After a short break the final set was played by the Nat Birchall Quintet. Nat is another long-time admirer of Coltrane’s work and also invited Alan to join the quintet for a Coltrane tune Selflessness in which where the interplay between the players was really intense and dramatic.
The finale with everybody on stage was a barnstorming Ascension and brought to an end a brilliant evening of quality jazz dedicated to the memory of the all-time great composer and saxophonist John Coltrane. What a night!
A highlight for me was being able to purchase the first copy to be sold of the CD box set and have Alan sign it for me. A prized possession which contains a fascinating journey over six decades of Skid’s development as a musician. The story is elegantly traced by Richard Williams in the comprehensive booklet of sleeve notes. Highly recommended – as only 8 of the 46 tracks included have been published before so it’s a truly unique opportunity to hear the range of Alan’s playing from early days with his dad through to recent Coltrane commemorative (or thank you) gigs in 2019.
The whole project – box set and concert – was masterminded by Mark Wastell’s Confront Recordings label from which you can also buy this amazing testimonial to a great tenor saxophone player when it goes on official release in a couple of weeks’ time.
Watch this space for the date.
Words and images Mike Raggett April 2023
The Spirit lives on
John Coltrane may well have died on 17 July – indeed, sadly, he did 52 years ago – but on 17 July 2019 his spirit was evident at Café Oto for a 52nd anniversary commemorative concert featuring the Alan Skidmore Quartet. This event was organised by musician and producer Mark Wastell of Confront Recordings who had invited Alan to play at the previous concert in 2017 which marked fifty years since Coltrane’s death and which subsequently featured as a Confront CD set.
The Alan Skidmore Quartet
This year it was an all-Coltrane evening spread over three magnificent sets.
In the first of these Alan’s regular quartet featuring Steve Melling on piano, Andrew Cleyndert on double bass and Miles Levin on drums enchanted the audience with a continuous performance of three tracks from the seminal album A Love Supreme. They started with Resolution, segued into Pursuance and brought the first part of the evening to a close with the rarely performed Psalm. The last strains of this died away into one of those moments of enraptured silence before the extended applause broke out.
Alan plays Psalm
In his introduction Alan had explained that he couldn’t stand up for long periods because of having a leg full of steel rods which resulted from an accident some 40 years ago. So, Alan sat out the second set while the Steve Melling trio were joined by guest tenor saxophonist Ed Jones. Remaining with Coltrane material they treated us to blues and ballads including Mr Day from Coltrane Plays The Blues from 1962, Central Park West from Coltrane’s Sound released in 1964 and Moment’s Notice from the early Blue Trane from 1957.
Steve Melling Trio
Ed Jones
The final set saw Alan with the quartet playing one of his most popular numbers After the Rain which Alan recorded with a full orchestra on the album with the same name in 1998. Utterly spellbinding in quieter ballad mode, Alan then wrapped up the evening by asking Ed Jones and Howard Cottle (who had featured alongside Alan in Paul Dunmall’s Sun Ship Quartet two years earlier) to join him on the stage. The intensity, inventiveness and variety of these three tenor sax masters on Transition from the epynymous posthumous album. But they did not overshadow Melling, Cleyndert and especially Miles Levin who all made huge contributions to this barnstorming end to a fabulous evening.
If there is an afterlife, JC would have been smiling broadly and applauding this wonderful tribute.
The finale with (l-r) Steve Melling, Ed Jones, Alan Skidmore, Andrew Cleyndert, Howard Cottle and Miles Levin
The three tenors
UPDATE 27 August 2019
At the Café Oto gig was renowned jazz journalist and reviewer John Fordham. He obviously enjoyed the evening and wrote this for the September issue of Jazzwise magazine.
Unmissable gig at Café Oto
If you missed Alan Skidmore’s performance at the 50th anniversary commemoration of John Coltrane’s death you can hear it on the double CD which has attracted phenomenally good reviews, which are reflected in a previous post.
But there’s nothing like hearing the legendary tenor player giving it some wellie live. And you have a chance next month when on Wednesday 17 July Alan with his own quartet will be playing a 52nd anniversary concert. Alan’s quartet is Steve Melling on piano, Andrew Cleyndert on double bass and Miles Levin on drums and they are going to be joined by special guest ED Jones also on tenor saxophone.
It promises to be a great night of high octane jazz so get your tickets soon. You can book online directly from the Café Oto website. Alan looks forward to seeing you all there. Doors open at 19:30. Get your tickets now before it’s too late.
Global acclaim for Skid CDs
The two most recent albums to feature Alan Skidmore have been garnering excellent international reviews. The double CD of Skid’s quartet live in Berlin and at the Boxford Fleece have been praised in the UK and the USA.
JAZZ JOURNAL
JAZZWISE MAGAZINE
While the John Coltrane Tribute at the Café Oto in 2017 has also attracted rave reviews especially in America.
This journal has an extended review which you can read here – scroll down to the fourth item. But here’s a flavour:
For the third set, Dunmall’s Sun Ship Quartet is joined by British tenor titan Alan Skidmore. Like Dunmall, Skidmore is a self-professed Coltrane acolyte and has delved deeply into Coltrane’s playing and compositions through his career. Skidmore and Dunmall played together in the group Tenor Tonic in the mid-80s but collaborated only rarely since then so this meet-up is particularly intriguing. With three reed players, things could easily become an impenetrable mess, but the group manages to avoid that. The five launch off on “Attaining,” with one horn intoning the plaintive theme over Bianco and Brice’s slow, loose simmer. The music wells as the full ensemble comes in to restate the theme, then opens up into extended solos for each of the horn players. Each attacks their explication with lithe, freely-melodic vitality, with Dunmall’s insistent stabbing take particularly arresting. The final Sun Ship tune, “Ascent,” is one of the strongest of the recording, starting with a pliantly probing bass solo which segues into a series of particularly searing solos by the reed players. Skidmore kicks things off with molten torrents that spill across the framework of the theme with thoughtful intensity. Dunmall switches to soprano and weaves a deconstruction of “My Favorite Things” into his labyrinthine take. Cottle wraps things up with incendiary passion, digging in to the tune with overblown multiphonics and cascading flurries. The three come together for a brief, three-way joust at the end that closes things with ardent abandon.
This blog was equally impressed by the recording of the concert. Again the whole piece is here but this will give you a taste of the reviewer’s opinion.
This album is like a bridge between traditions and innovations, modal and modern jazz, nervous and complicated bebop, aggressive hard bop, stable and calm cool jazz or frantic, wild, frustrating, aggressive and passionate free improvisations. Rich, multi-layered, colorful and universal musical pattern is created. It’s contained with dozens of textures, sounds, timbres, all kinds of rhythms, melodies, exotic or rare ways of playing, suggestive instrumentation and evocative musical language. The changes of moods and playing manners are just marvelous – it turns the music into dynamic, tremendous and sparkling set of compositions. “Paul Dunmall Sun Ship Quartet” is playing on every composition with famous jazz masters. Various combos are formed to create a different sound and mood. The last composition “Ascension” joins all musicians at one scene for free, passionate and bright improvisation. …
Julie Kjaer shows her best abilities of improvising and makes an impact on the whole sound. The saxophonists Paul Dunmall, Howard Cottle and Alan Skidmore create the basic of the melodic section. Wild, frantic, thrilling, scratching, furious, scandalous and aggressive solos meet the soft and gentle lyrical pieces, passionate and expressive melodies, trendy and fabulous riffs, luminous, growling and radiant bursts of energy or – romantic, dreamy, cool and simply beautiful excerpts. The saxophones dictate the mood and sound of whole album. It gives the main tune to the melody line also. The reeds is the source of energy, crazy ideas, expressive and luminous mood, driving and inspiring style and wild bursts.
In his review Bruce Lee Gallanter of the Downtown Music Gallery in New York said this of the Café Oto CDs.
On the second disc, the Sun Ship Quartet is joined by Alan Skidmore, now with three tenor saxists, the expanded group bringing the energy to boiling point. Drummer, Tony Bianco, pulls off a few great solos sounding little Elvin Jones on swirling mallets. The three sax quintet, sound astonishing on two more songs from “Sun Ship”, burning, erupting, exploding in Nirvana. The final piece is an extraordinary version of Coltrane’s classic “Ascension”, the original version which featured a half dozen extra saxists. It is the crowning way to bring this disc to an incredible conclusion, all three saxists getting a chance to stretch out, with the first up trio added for good measure, several layers of spirits, cosmic currents all rising together. It is one of the first days of Spring today (4/24/19) and the Sun and spiritual music sound perfect together after a long, cold, dismal at times winter. A toast to this mighty fine two CD set, no doubt one of this years best efforts!
And in the UK the Jazzwise issue for June carries this glowing 4 star review:
60 Years a Blowin’
THEN
1958 Alan Skidmore aged 17 is playing one of his first professional engagements at Butlins, Skegness and his father joined him on stage as Alan says, “To show me how to do it”!
NOW
Photo:Kay Skidmore 2018
2018 Alan Skidmore waiting to go on stage at the Llandudno Jazz Festival in the Green Room known as “Barnes’ Boudoir”.
Alan’s early years were spent in big bands and he had a number of opportunities to play alongside his already well-established tenor saxophone playing father.
1960s
Alan played for many BBC Jazz Club broadcasts played in bands like Eric Delaney’s and toured and recorded with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated and John Mayall’s Blues Breakers where he says he truly learned his art. As he told Jazzwise in 2008:
“You have to be hungry to play and perfect your art. But before that you have to learn to play the blues. If you can’t play the blues you’re stuffed.”
And as the decade closed Alan’s Quintet was chosen to represent the UK at the Montreux Jazz Festival.
John Taylor, Kenny Wheeler, Harry Miller, Alan Skidmore And Tony Oxley won the International Press Prize for best band and Alan won the soloist prize too and Tony Oxley won best drummer.
1970s
Alan was winner of Melody Maker‘s best tenor saxophonist poll for four years in a row and had the honour of playing with Elvin Jones whose connection to John Coltrane meant a great deal to Alan who has been greatly influenced by Coltrane throughout his career.
Playing with Elvin Jones’ Jazz Machine
S O S
With the Ronnie Scott Quintet he played on the same bill as Thelonious Monk at the Royal Festival Hall in 1975. Throughout the decade he toured extensively with SOS the three-saxophone group formed of Alan Skidmore, Mike Osborne and John Surman. Alan also became a regular member of Georgie Fame’s New Blue Flames and would be for the next 40 years.
1980s
In a very busy period of playing and recording: a couple of highlights were playing in a duo at the 1985 Edinburgh Jazz Festival with Stan Tracey a musician with whom Alan had a long association and tremendous respect.
Alan with Stan Tracey at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival 1985
It was in the 80s too that Alan replaced Dexter Gordon in George Gruntz’s Concert Jazz Band an association that also lasted for many years. Alan worked and recorded with the WDR Big Band based in Köln which included a tour of south east Asia as soloist with the band sponsored by the Goethe Institut. Then in 1987 he was asked to play at the John Coltrane Memorial Concert commemorating 20 years since Coltrane’s death.
1990s
Recording The Call
In 1991 Alan began a long musical relationship with Colin Towns’ Mask Orchestra and his Provocateur Record label. Alan was the first musician to play in South Africa after the ending of apartheid when in 1994 he made a British Council sponsored visit. Alan returned with Colin Towns to record The Call with musicians from the band Amampondo who were to become the core of Alan’s own Afro-European group Ubizo.
2000s
Alan Skidmore’s Ubizo came to tour the UK and had residencies at Ronnie Scott’s in 2002 and 2003.
The noughties saw more recordings, more festivals including Cork, Brecon, Cheltenham and the North Sea and more tours with his own bands and others mainly in Europe. He made a trip to New York in 2006 as he was nominated for best reissue CD for Once Upon a Time in the Jazz Journalists Association awards at which his old friend Sonny Rollins was crowned musician of the year.
2010s
As he enters his sixth decade in the business things are slowing down a bit but only a bit. He played at the opening of the The Jazz Centre UK in Southend in 2017 a year which saw Alan again commemorating John Coltrane’s 50th anniversary by playing music from the album Sunship at London’s Café Oto. As Skid said at the time:
“He was playing this stuff when he was 36, here am I trying to play it when I’m nearly 76. I must be mad.”
But then he goes off on a Saxophone Summit Tour of Belgium and the Netherlands with dear friends that go a long way back which we reported in the blog at the time.
Luckily for all his fans Alan will still be playing his unique jazz music for a while longer yet.
60 years and still blowing strong.
Alan Skidmore 